Koenig, H[erman] C[harles]

   (1893–1959)

   Bibliophile and late associate of HPL. Koenig, employed in the Electrical Testing Laboratories in New York, came in touch with HPL in the fall of 1933 when he asked HPL how to procure the Necronomicon. In the summer of 1934 Koenig began circulating books by William Hope Hodgson among HPL’s circle, leading to HPL’s enthusiastic article “The Weird Work of William Hope Hodgson” ( Phantagraph,February 1937). HPL met Koenig on several occasions during his visits to New York in the Christmas seasons of 1934 and 1935; on January 2, 1935, HPL, R.H.Barlow, and Frank Belknap Long visited the Electrical Testing Laboratories, a place where electrical appliances were tested. In early 1936 Koenig was planning a trip to Charleston and, knowing that HPL had visited it, asked him for some tips on the sights there. HPL dusted off his unpublished 1930 essay, “An Account of Charleston,” and revised and abridged it in a letter to Koenig. Koenig was so taken with the account that he ran off about twenty-five mimeographed copies in March, titling it Charleston. Koenig had made several mistranscriptions of HPL’s handwriting, and he also asked HPL to rewrite the beginning so that it read as an essay; HPL complied, and Koenig ran off about thirty to fifty copies of the revised version, enclosing it in a paper folder and reproducing as photostats some of HPL’s drawings of Charleston sites. After HPL’s death Koenig edited the small-press magazine The Reader and Collector,reprinting HPL’s Hodgson essay (June 1944) and publishing a lengthy article, “Modern Mythological Fiction” by Robert Butman (October 1945, January 1946, and April 1946), which discussed HPL in part (Fritz Leiber’s response, “Butman’s Essay,” appeared in October 1946). Koenig worked with August Derleth to reprint Hodgson’s four novels with Arkham House (The House on the Borderland and Other and Other Novels, 1946).